Crash Course in Politics

FOR a moment, let's keep this book aside and dwell on its author. Ved Mehta writes well; often, he writes beautifully. Blind since he was four-the result of meningitis-Mehta's disability has haunted his prose as a powerful, unsentimental metaphor for our own blinkered vision. Long before immigrant writing got trendy, Mehta opened our eyes to the now dark, now bright world of the outsider through books like The Stolen Light and Sound-Shadows of the New World. t Perhaps his most memorable pieces relate to his days as a newly arrived 15-year-old at the Arkansas School for the Blind and his college years in California. Few can forget his first kiss to a "sighted" girl, "as abrupt as falling off a cliff, as lasting as a recurrent memory". Or the hard edge of nis selfishness when a girlfriend (the "first woman I'd known") had an abortion. He was relieved when she told him that it could be someone else's child. But the guilt remained. "Long after I lost all contact with her," he wrote, "I kept dreaming about the basin of blood (in the operation room) until I thought it would drown my very soul." That was journalism as literature.

And that's why Rajiv Gandhi and Rama's Kingdom is a big disappointment. For, reading it is worthwhile only if you want a crash course in national politics, 1984 to 1993, and are too lazy to do your own research. Nine chapters pack in virtually everything that made it to page one: from Maneka Gandhi's defiance to Indira's assassination; from Rajiv Gandhi's rise and fall to his death. The last chapter, "The Mosque and Rama's Kingdom," deals with the rise of the bjp and the fall of the Babri Masjid. There's even a token reference to Harshad Mehta's 15-minute-fa-mous suitcase, among countless token references to the Assam agitation. caste violence, theLTTE, Bofors, Fairfax, et cetera et cetera.

Flitting from fact to fact is a style routinely adapted by news-feature writers. Though not an imaginative one, it's a reliable technique. But it has two pitfalls which editors dread. First, the writing begins to crumble once the story goes beyond the length of a typical magazine piece. And two, the writer tends to become too egalitarian in the treatment of subjects. What should get attention is squeezed into a couple of paragraphs; what shouldn't starts running into several pages. Mehta, despite his crisp prose, falls into both these traps.

For example, communal violence in India and the bjp's popularity- perhaps the most significant development in post-Independence India-get a little over 18 pages while the Maneka-Indira spat runs into 30. Or take the second chapter. "Turban and the Cap," that dea Is largely with the Punj ab problem. In barely 2 5 pages, we get to know about-hold your breath-the origin of Sikhism, the division of Punjab in 1966, the Anandpur Sahib resolutions, Zail Singh's antecedents, the role of the President, the architecture of Rashtrapati Bhavan. the Assam agitation. There's more: the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre, Operation Blue Star, the Hazratbal crisis in 199 3 and Mrs Gandhi's assassination.

The result of all this is a messy, hand-me-down anecdotal history of India. Sections of the book have appeared in The New Yorker, which is surprising given that its editors-considered the most demanding in the world-have been known for giving the magazine's writers the freedom tointerpret histo^. and almost always with dazzling results.

Surprisingly, Mehta shies away from exploring the basic causes behind the events which he has so meticulously chronicled. At times, when he attempts to do it, his political analysis seems too pat. Like when he attributes the rise of the bjp to the telecast of Ra-maijan and Mahabharat on national tv! Or when he ends his book by arguing that, perhaps, it's Hinduism-with its sense of resignation and acceptance- that's more suited to modern India. In the next sentence, he adds that it's democracy which will defuse the current tension. This, after he's recalled the threat that Indian democracy faces because of a resurgence of Hinduism. These jar all the more given Mehta's formidable reputation as a sharp observer of the human condition. Rajiv Gandhi and Rama's Kingdom could have become a far more valuable addition to political discourse had Mehta done what he does best: approach events and personalities like a writer, not just a reporter, as he did so effectively in Portrait of India. He does that in one small, tantalising section, though, the one about his visit to indraprastha Indoor Stadium, a few weeks before the Asian Games. The writing is vintage Mehta: "Below the dome, of shimmering aluminium, it had what looked like portholes all around: in faet, it might have been a gigantic flying saucer. The stadium site was surrounded by barbed wire, like a concentration camp, and inside were thousands of labourers racing to finish the work-wasted, half-clad men. women, and children covered with dust, many of them high up on scaffolding and weighted down with head loads."

It's only in such sections-there are too few of these in the book-that Mehta takes a stand. Otherwise, history keeps sliding from scene to scene while Mehta watches it go by, rarely passing any judgement. That's a pity, considering the abysmal level of much of political writing in the English language press. It needed someone like Ved Mehta to write about the Rajiv years. Fortunately, he did. Unfortunately, for all of us, it didn't work

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